Michael Palin

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Boat People

There are those whose impact on your life is in inverse proportion to the amount of time you spent with them. I felt that most poignantly this week as I heard news of the deaths of Nigel Walters and Tom Stoppard.

I spent 40 days with Nigel Walters, as he filmed me on the second leg of Around The World In Eighty Days back in 1988. We made our way together across the Pacific, on the train from Los Angeles to New York and across the Atlantic, holding our breath as the eighty days began to run out.

Around The World 80 Days: Day 0, Photo 2
80 Days crew before setting out. Nigel Walters (front row, far right).

Throughout it all Nigel was wonderful company. A Welshman with a wry, mischievous sense of humour, he was keen to do his job at all times, indeed he and I were once caught shooting a sequence of myself on a heaving deck in the middle of the Pacific, only hours after the director had expressly forbidden any more shots of water.

Despite a serious hangover he shot the triumphant return home and shared all our disappointment at not being allowed into the Reform Club.

We didn’t work together again, but there was never a question of our not remaining friends. He was warm and passionate about his work and his friendships and he will always remain indelible in my memory as the man who brought me home.

I first met Tom Stoppard in May 1975 after I had been offered the part of Harris in a BBC revival of Three Men In A Boat to be directed by Stephen Frears. We drank afternoon tea at the Waldorf Hotel in the Aldwych as elderly couples took to the dance floor. In marked contrast to Stephen, who was agonising over the rest of the casting, Tom was relaxed and easy going. He felt that when it all boiled down to it filming was about getting together a group of people you like, and he quoted Evelyn Waugh ‘The Second World War wasn’t bad, provided you were with nice people’ And being with Tom was not only very nice but I learnt a lot from him about how to enjoy work.

Boat People - Three Men in a Boat
Tom Stoppard’s Three Men in a Boat, 1975, with Stephen Moore and Tim Curry

As with Nigel Walters we never worked together again, but whenever we met up it was always special.

Two boat people gone. But if I ever get to cross the River Styx myself I would want Nigel filming and Tom comforting me with one of his King-Size cigarettes.